CNN’s Homelessness In America Series Starting in LA with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass

CNN’s Jake Tapper

In the middle of recent record-breaking rain in Los Angeles, today, the city is clearing an encampment for unhoused people. Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, campaigned on fixing the City's homeless crisis. This is theoretically part of that fix.

Karen Bass 

This is exactly why I ran for Mayor. This is the reason why.

Jake Tapper

Mayor Bass took me to see the cleanup firsthand. Getting people out of tents, onto buses, and into temporary housing, they leave behind anything they cannot carry. Inside Safe is the name of Mayor Bass’ flagship program to tear down these encampments and bring LA's unhoused indoors.

Jake Tapper (To Mayor Bass)

When I spoke to you about a year ago, you talked about your goal for homelessness and the end of homelessness in Los Angeles by the end of your first term.

Karen Bass  

Well, I think that progress is going well. We destroyed the myth that people do not want to leave the tents, that people don't want to leave their cars or their RVs. We've had the opposite problem. We have more people willing to leave than we have the capacity of rooms for them.

Jake Tapper

In a remarkable new study, researchers at the University of California San Francisco surveyed thousands of the homeless in California. Nearly 90% of survey participants indicated high housing costs as a barrier to their moving into permanent housing. In the majority of those surveyed, most wanted to get off the streets.

Speaker (civilian)

There are people on the street who don't want to be housed, but most of them do. It's just about finding the right housing for them in the right situation.

Jake Tapper

Major factors in finding housing are high rents and low income. Then, of course, there's also discrimination and bad credit-- some people don't even have ID, and some have been evicted before. Many are dealing with addiction or struggling with physical or mental health problems.

Karen Bass 

Affordability is definitely the issue, but the shredding of the social safety net over the years has resulted in the situation that we have here. We have to repair that while we repair the human beings that suffer because of it.

Jake Tapper

The number of people experiencing homelessness in a single night increased by 12% in 2023 (U.S. Data). Partially due to pandemic programs preventing evictions and housing losses came to an end. A quarter of the homeless were unhoused for the first time in their lives,

Jake Tapper (to Mayor Bass)

How many people fell into homelessness during the pandemic?

Karen Bass

Before the pandemic, there were probably about 20 or 30 thousand people. Now, it's 46 thousand.

Jake Tapper

Today, Mark, the father of four, is getting out of his tent and into temporary housing nearby.

Mark (civilian)

I’m getting into housing to do better for myself and in my kid's life.

Jake Tapper What do you want people out there watching to know about the unhoused community?

Mark (civilian)

We're not all drug addicts. We're not all thieves. We're not all people trying to hurt you or steal from you. When you see a person down, I think as a human being, it would be a great thing to provide a bottle of water, maybe a blanket-- something to save their life.

Jake Tapper

Mark's new housing is in these former shipping containers which were used to build interim housing quickly. Since the launch of Inside Safe, more than 2 thousand people have moved into interim housing, but only 329 have moved into permanent housing.

Since Mayor Bass took office, this program has cost the City of Los Angeles more than $53 million. The city argues it was well spent, pointing out how the fire department spent nearly $125 million on incidents involving unhoused people last year.

Jake Tapper (to Mayor Bass)

There is a misunderstanding about homelessness in this country. A lot of people think it's just people with psychological problems or just people with addiction.

Karen Bass 

We have about 9 thousand children who are homeless in Los Angeles-- some of them are in and out of school. Some attend school, but many live in cars and RVs.

One of the fastest-growing sectors of the unhoused population is senior citizens, as people in their 60s and 70s. They get priced out of the market and they wind up unhoused.

Jake Tapper

Even so, the state of California is trying to tackle mental health and substance abuse by implementing Care Courts, to push those in need off the streets and into treatment.

Karen Bass

This is a controversial opinion. I don't think it's okay to be profoundly mentally ill, walking in and out of traffic, while being allowed to do so. I think some people need to be hospitalized and perhaps for some, against their will. I think it is inhumane to allow people to die on the streets.

Jake Tapper

The short-term solution is to get people out of the tents, off of the streets, out of the cars, and into these containers. Yet, this isn't a long-term solution to the problem.

Karen Bass 

No, but let me tell you what short-term is. I think ‘short-term’ is about a year and a half, and I say that because it takes a while to build housing. Unfortunately, the policy de facto had been, you stay on the street while we build something. I think that is completely unacceptable.

So, what is the solution? Just putting somebody in a house is not enough. There needs to be healthcare along with other social services and support. Then they need to go into permanent housing.